Lost In the Prayers

I.

In our railroad novel, we break between the blasts of rattling carraiges, turning our eyes
to the stars, warped by old, scratched plastic windows. We fall
into the dark following each flicker of the buzzing lights and with the ticking second hand of a clock
in the space between our clasped fingers, we sing together with silent, unmoving mouths.


We left letters behind us in the silence, but, whispering under the grumbles of the train and rain,
I pray with my lips to your palm, and I wonder if you can feel them, brushing
your skin and seeping into your pores:
___________Keep us cradled here in the drums of the rain, where we cannot hear,
___________and let the lights flicker out for good, so we cannot see.
___________Make us forget; I want nothing more than to forget.

But, I can feel your hand soften in sleep, fingers falling from my fervorous words,
and I know that my eyes are leaden and filming over, but I just... I don't want this to end.







II.
We wake with tumbled limbs and sore ankles--
I look at the surreal absence in your eyes, and I want to cry. There's
something missing there, something forgotten in the back of your mind
where all those beautiful thoughts were nestled up, something lost in
conception as a new reality was birthed...


I want to press my self-blessed hands to your irises and
pull it back out with the tips of my fingers, but you
blink at me like a stranger and I pull them to my chest instead,
hoping that I can leave you soon, silently wishing that I had a better god.

And then, I push my prayers to my eyes and wipe them away on the wool.

It was pretty, whatever it was...

It's called a Railroad Novel, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with railroads. If it had something to do with the underground railroad, trains, tracks, etc, it didn't show. I felt a little disappointed, I half expected something like "Casey Jr. coming down the track...".

It was well written, but I feel like I missed the point of whatever it was you were trying to communicate. Thought you should know.

Hullo.

Persephoneia wrote:I.

In our railroad novel, we break between the blasts of rattling carraiges, turning our eyes
to the stars, warped by old, scratched plastic windows. We fall
into the dark following each flicker of the buzzing lights and with the ticking second hand of a clock
in the space between our clasped fingers, we sing together with silent, unmoving mouths.


We left letters behind us in the silence, but, whispering under the grumbles of the train and rain,
I pray with my lips to your palm, and I wonder if you can feel them, brushing
your skin and seeping into your pores:
___________Keep us cradled here in the drums of the rain, where we cannot hear,
___________and let the lights flicker out for good, so we cannot see.
___________Make us forget; I want nothing more than to forget.

But, I can feel your hand soften in sleep, fingers falling from my fervorous words,
and I know that my eyes are leaden and filming over, but I just... I don't want this to end.







II.
We wake with tumbled limbs and sore ankles--
I look at the surreal absence in your eyes, and I want to cry. There's
something missing there, something forgotten in the back of your mind
where all those beautiful thoughts were nestled up, something lost in
conception as a new reality was birthed...


I want to press my self-blessed hands to your irises and
pull it back out with the tips of my fingers, but you
blink at me like a stranger and I pull them to my chest instead,
hoping that I can leave you soon, silently wishing that I had a better god.

And then, I push my prayers to my eyes and wipe them away on the wool.

As always, your flow and imagery are phenomenal. You manage to set each up in a way that causes them to be almost complementary - without the rhythm, the imagery simply would not be the same. Of course, the same thing makes up both the contents of the imagery and the beat of the rhythm. At the same time, the two qualities are very different - you, of course, know that.

However, despite this advantage, the one thing I feel this lacks is a sense of direction. This could be viewed as a train - a luxury train, let's suppose. This train is beautiful, attractive, and yet...where is it going? Where are the tracks? The possible paths it could possibly be taking are infinite, and hence must skid along each one of them. You see, you provide such a panoply of different icons that each could be interpreted in a variety of ways, or could be made to fit into some different moral. The goal of poetry is not to give the reader a wad of clay and expect them to construct a certain model. While part of it is up to the reader, you must at least give them something to work with. Otherwise, your piece ends up cluttered and confusing. You have the dough, and it's wonderful, but it is also pointless if you don't have the cookie cutter.

My metaphors never make sense.

-Kafka